Chapter 1: Pain, Then Nothing
Chapter Text
The U.S.-Canadian border, 1940
It was a typically-cold night at the Black Raven when Amos Bradford took in his two guests. It had been some time since he'd had paying customers, but he knew how to take care of things during financial droughts. He made sure to express his gratitude to the two men, and watched keenly as they signed the guestbook. The first man, the towering blond, whose hair was braided like that of a woman, signed as “Adam Neramani.” Curious name—Indian in origin, perhaps? And the other man, who insisted in wearing a thick scarf and goggles despite his present safety from the weather, signed his name...“John Smith.” That was the tip-off Amos needed. Under the roof of the Black Raven tavern, the man also called the Black Raven would get to work.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” Bradford droned once they'd signed. “Let Andy or Logan know if you need anything.” And they had nodded silently and walked away. “Smith” seemed to walk with the hint of a limp.
Once an hour had passed and it was clear no one else was passing through the storm, Amos climbed up to the room and rapped on the door. “Mr. Smith?” he asked. “I figured it's time now to discuss your passage.”
There was no sound within, at least not that Bradford could hear.
“Mr. Smith, I assume you're here because you need passage into Canada. Sins past and all that. I'm willing to work with you and your associate if you'll only open the door.”
That was what the Black Raven did for a living. Through his self-named inn he helped crooks get into Canada; there were fees involved, of course, but that was just the nature of business. Usually, in order to avoid a paper trail, his clients signed his guestbook as “John Smith,” and those who knew of him used that name as a code to pass on to him who they were and what they wanted. He sighed; he didn't want to waste time. He had the key, but the door wasn't locked. He opened the door slowly.
The one called Adam Neramani was sitting on one of the twin beds. Mr. “Smith” was nowhere to be found, but he could have been in the bathroom. For now, Neramani was operating a set of silverware rather strangely. In one hand he had a spoon, in the other, a knife. Using the knife he had slit open the tips of his fingers and run stripes of blood on the underside of the spoon. Topped high in the spoon was a brownish lump...the man's eyes, covered high by a sweaty brow, stared down angrily, seeming to glow with a fierce light.
“Burn,” he whispered. “C'mon, burn.”
“Excuse me, but what in Hell's name are you doing?”
“Tryin' to get high.”
“Not. In. My. Establishment!” Though he wasn't the young man he once was, Amos marched to the young man and swatted the blood-stained spoon from his hands. “I'm used to dealing with the criminal element, but I won't allow any dope-fiends to fix themselves under my roof.”
“Shouldn'ta done that, man...” His weary voice had a strange lilt to it; an accent he didn't recognize. Only now did Amos notice that his garb was strange. He had a form-fitting blue-garment which covered nearly his whole body, save for his head and arms. His lack of sleeves was especially bizarre given how cold it was outside.
“Don't threaten me, young man. You and your companion are going to leave, now.”
In response to this, Neramani rose with strength unbecoming a heroin addict. He towered over Amos, but the Black Raven was undeterred. He'd dealt with bigger bullies before.
But then, from the bathroom: “Adam! Enough!”
The man who called himself “John Smith” entered the room, now missing his disguising trappings. Amos was only now able to take in the man's appearance. He was a very slight man—he could tell that before, but now without the scarf he seemed even slighter. He'd also seen the pale hair that crowned his head, but the lightness of that hair was a shocking contrast to the nearly-black eyes that sat in that large, pale, high-cheeked head of his. He grinned with thin, nearly invisible lips, and now that his hands were free of the thick gloves Bradford could see that his fingers were unnaturally long, being more like the legs of a spider.
“Let's not berate our host when he's been so kind to us,” this man said.
“Who are you? Truthfully?” Bradford asked, taking a step towards the stranger. Neramani looked like he was going to attack him, but at his compatriot's invisible command he did nothing.
“My name actually is John. I wasn't deceitful in that,” “Smith” said. “Properly, I am John Wainwright. But you may know me better as Odd John.”
Amos squinted. “That name is almost familiar,” he said. “I have some half-memory of a pseudo-scientific story printed in the newspaper, about six or seven years back, about a so-called 'mutant' who went by that name. He started an island colony for his disfigured kind and died when the colony was destroyed.” The words came to his mind easily for some reason, the more he talked. “Are you he?”
“I am. Reports of my death have been...well. I'm sure you've read your Twain, Black Raven.”
“You know I am the Black Raven, then. Do you wish to invoke my usual services?”
“You mean do I wish to be smuggled to a place where the lawmen of America cannot touch me? No. But I will take advantage of one of your regular provisions, in the form of this warm room, this soft bed...and perhaps, your company.”
Amos felt a strange stirring then towards his guest—his phrasing was curious. The mention of the soft bed...
The older man shook his head. “I, er, presume for the purpose of conversation?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I don't see why not. I'm not likely to get more guests this night. And I do enjoy chatting now and again with my guests. Provided they, er, don't mean any threat to me.”
“Neither I nor Adam will hurt you. I give you my honor as a member of Homo superior.”
Amos Bradford presumed that to be the name John claimed for the species of mutants he ostensibly represented. He didn't know how much honor a mutant could have, but he trusted his word for now.
“What were you interested in talking about?”
“Oh, nothing in particular. Perhaps you have a topic in mind. What was the last thing you were thinking about?”
It wasn't often that he got a question like that. Truth be told, his mind was on bookkeeping, but he wasn't about to share such a boring detail with a lodger. Instead, he focused on what he was thinking about while he was working on the books.
“I was thinking of my family.”
A little white lie—he was thinking of her.
“Ah, yes. You have a proud family, don't you?” John asked, grinning. He gestured to the nearly desk chair, urging Amos to sit—he himself sat on the bed. “Many siblings, I believe. Lloyd, Elwyn, and your sister Paula—and closer to you, Robert and Leo. And of course, the adoptee, Paul.” He leaned forward somewhat. “Bradford's actually your middle name, isn't it? Your full name is Amos Bradford Renault.”
“How did you know that?” But as soon as he asked, Amos knew. Odd John was showing off that he could actually read minds.
“And open you up to mine as well,” John added. His mouth didn't move as he said this.
“Why are you here? Why are you doing this to me?”
“Don't be afraid, Mr. Bradford. I have no intent to harm you. I merely wanted to tell you a story, and you seemed the right man to tell it to. After all, it involves the person you were truly thinking of. Your wife.”
Amos nodded—he was right. He had been thinking of Polyphema, poor one-eyed, eye-patched Polyphema, his beloved. She had vanished; they all had. Their children, save for Madeline, had all disappeared along with their mother and uncle. Riven Blood, his brother-in-law, was gone; his son Phorcys was gone, and his daughter Thusa, beautiful Thusa, was gone too. He never found out where they went. He assumed they were kidnapped, but he never received any threats, any demands. Maybe they'd left him, but there seemed to be no cause on Earth that would be worthy enough for that. He'd been a good husband and a good father. Sometimes it seemed the only rational conclusion was that his brother-in-law had gone mad and killed the whole lot of them. But he'd never found any evidence for any of his theories.
“What do you have to tell me about my wife?”
“It's a long story. Is that alright?”
“I suppose. I take it you won't take this as a chance to toy with the fragile mind of an old widower.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Bradford. I take your human life very seriously.” And at this point, Odd John stopped using his mouth completely. His story began.
“The tale of your wife Polyphema is very much related to my own life. In 1934, the same year your family vanished, I was recovering from my failed attempt to lead my mutant colony against the humans. Hope seemed lost for Homo superior, and I wanted to know what our future was. But I didn't wish to merely see our future—I could that easily enough, with the power of precognition. I wanted to live in that future. I realize now that I wanted a second chance at life, having lost and wasted what I have now. I will not grieve myself, however—instead, I will tell what happened in that new life of mine.
“In the future I was able to make a psychic projection through which I experienced life. His name was Charles. I inserted myself into the life of real people, making a fraudulent history with my powers. Thus, with this fresh face, I was the son of Brian Xavier, a nuclear research scientist, who came from a family near as large as yours, Bradford. His older brother Jerry helped solve the Moon Killer Murders of 1930; his brother Maurice was also a scientist, but he became some sort of vampire in 1937; and then his youngest sibling Alexis worked as a phony medium, before he was killed stopping a criminal in 1946. I was 'born' with a brother, James, and after Dad died and Mom remarried I had a stepbrother, Cain. Both took to dark paths. James became the so-called 'Man with the X-Ray Eyes,' while Cain later fought me under the name 'the Juggernaut.'
“I first appeared in the early 1950s, and once my past was secured I fought in the coming war in Korea alongside Cain. After the War I became friends with one of the most important mutants I would ever meet, a man named Erik Lehnsherr. Later, I would know him as Magnus, or Magneto. For his was the power of magnetism.
“I could only manifest in the 1950s because in order to create this new body I need a power source. I used a ritual performed in 1947 by the witch Zahl Doone, which transformed the corpse of Alexis Xavier into a being known as the Stone God. The remnant energy of this minor deity was still strong enough to create a new form, especially after much of it was released after the Stone God's destruction by the vigilante Bloody Mary.
“I was originally planning to work with my friend Erik to figure out the next stage of mutant-human relations, but we kept finding our differences. You see, Charles Xavier was me, but he was also his own person. As he grew older, and his role cemented, he took a more...compassionate view towards humanity than what I had back in 1934. I decided to let this version of myself explore his unique feelings, even after they made me lose the friendship of the much more volatile Magneto.
“After a few short years I began to run out of psychic energy. My body was crippled—confined to a wheelchair. I needed to steal more energy from somewhere to renew myself if I was going to prolong this life. I eventually found my power source in the form of Jean Grey—a mutant like myself, who was a descendant of the infamous Dorian Grey. Dorian Grey was a mutant too, I believe, and his powers formed a psychic connection with his portrait. When it was painted his mutation was activated, and he became an immortal, sustained by his psychic powers...at least, until he destroyed the source of his immortality. Jean's powers were more like mine—she was a powerful telepath, but unlike me she also possessed telekinesis. I planned to convince her that I was going to train her in the use of her mutant powers, when in truth I was going to feed on her like a vampire drinks blood.
“But like I said, I was not the man I once was. When Jean accepted my invitation, we adventured together and I was attacked by a fellow mutant, a mind-worm. He fed on my emotions, and the experience was horrifying—I knew at once I couldn't subject my new friend to such terror. We defeated the vampiric creature, but I think it survived, to plague Spider-Man.”
“Spider-Man?” Bradford interrupted.
“Yes, one of our allies...he'll show up in the late 1950s. Now, after Jean and I fought the mind-worm, as I said, I knew I could not feed on her. Instead, I would proceed with my training of her, alongside other mutants, and we would use our powers to help humans. By Jean's suggestion, the team was named for me. Xavier's Men. The X-Men.
“We gained more recruits quickly. Henry McCoy wasn't a mutant but he was an illegitimate son of James Wildman's cohort Monk Mayfair. He offered connections between our organization and Wildman's, but Hank was also a genius, like his father, and a great fighter like his father too. For his large feet he was nicknamed 'the Beast' in high school and that's what we ended up calling him.
“Warren Worthington III was a descendant of a mutant performer from Victorian times named Fevvers. He was called the Angel, and while he and his ancestor's wings looked tangible, they were in truth made of psychic energy. He joined around the same time as Bobby Drake, whom we called Iceman. He had the same power of temperature subtraction as Elijah Snow—I can't help but wonder if Snow was Bobby's real father.
“And then there was Scott. Scott 'Slim' Summers, a serious lad, who nonetheless modeled his costume on that of Dr. Solar. His eyes released a blazing beam of scarlet energy, which could only be stopped by the particular lenses of his visor. He came from a strong mutant family. His brothers Alex, Gabriel, and Adam were all mutants, and the children he had were mutants also. He and Jean fell and love, and at least two of his offspring were by her...”
“Wait.” Amos Bradford interrupted now, as John had expected him to. “You mentioned his brother Adam. Surely you don't mean...”
“If things had turned out right,” the sullen Neramani said, “I would have been named Adam Summers. Instead of Adam-X...or the X-Treme.”
“Ex...treme?”
“That's a story in itself,” John cut in then. “To continue, however, with the establishment of my X-Men. They gave me a purpose which I never before understood. We had so many adventures together. Our primary foe was Magneto, who led a team of his own—his Brotherhood of Mutants. Our battles against them were long and difficult, even after we took on new recruits, like Lorna Dane, called Polaris, and Calvin Rankin, the Mimic. Scott's brother Alex Summers joined as Havok. He, too, had command over destructive energy, but this radiated outward through his hands rather than through his eyes, and had control over this power. Polaris, meanwhile, seemed to be Erik's daughter.
“I had children of my own. My son David took the name of Legion as his psychic powers developed, and my son Thomas, also Odd, had the power to speak to ghosts. I also married the Princess of the Shiar, a Mongovian people, and I learned I had a twin sister, Cassandra Nova. My family grew quickly but the X-Men were my true family.
“And they had descendants of their own. Our existence steadily grew more complicated. The actions of Magneto turned the world against us, leading to men like Senator Kelly, who sought to make us illegal. But it was also complicated in other ways. We began to probe into other realities, other timelines—other states of being. Scott's son Nathan was raised in an alternate future, and his daughter and his second son were both born in alternate universes. The Days of Future Past—and the Age of Apocalypse.”
“I don't understand...what are these names?”
“The realms my influence on the timeline created. Worlds where machines ruled the world, and where an ancient and terrible dictator brought destruction on all free people. Terrible places. But they'll never exist now.”
“How can you guarantee...” But he sighed. That was far from the first thing about this story that was outlandish. Psychic mutants were enough, and he had added in aliens, robots, and vampires—but now he was talking about parallel universes. That was too much for him.
“In one of the last cases of the X-Men, we fought the Living Monolith, who had a psychic link to Alex. Their powers were joined, by the manipulation of the mad scientist Nathaniel Mirakle, also known as 'Sinister.' And as we fought this Monolith, Achmed Abdol, I sensed he had a connection to me as well. And why not—after all, he was the reincarnation of the Stone God. Abdol was a clone of Alexis Xavier, and he channeled the same power that I used to make my psychic body. The Monolith was to the Stone God what I was to Odd John Wainwright...
“I couldn't help but wonder if history was repeating itself. Or if the future was repeating itself, for that matter.
“At long last, however, our complicated existence caught up with us. Magneto's other daughter, the Scarlet Witch, had become traumatized by the loss of her husband, and by the dimensional tampering the X-Men had engaged in. After all, her mutant powers were linked to probability—she affected probability fields so as to 'hex' her opponents, giving them 'bad luck.' That was only a fraction of her psychic potential, however. Using her powers and the words, 'No more mutants,' she sent a psychic bolt back in time—back to 1950, to the point of my 'birth.' All she knew was that she was using her powers to erase the X-Men from existence. Terribly, marvelously, she succeeded.
“She splintered the power of the Stone God before I had a chance to use it. Thus, I was never born—Charles Xavier would never be. And without my presence, many of our buried metagenes, our Oddian mutations, would never activate. The X-Men would live as normal humans, unaware that their buried powers kept their mutated appearances hidden from the world. There were due to be consequences, naturally, for all that we had done was now undone. Time itself was torn open raw and bleeding.
“The X-Men, and many of their enemies and associates, were thrown into a new continuum of existence, as part of the timeline's healing process—invisible hands threw my Children of the Atom into one of the cracks in time born by our displacement. They were made aliens from their own native universe. There was pain for them, then nothing.
“In furthering the healing process, the universe bounced back, and my X-Men returned to me...but in altered forms. I have determined that the Summers-Grey family still exists, perhaps even bound to carry out echoes of our old adventures. In changed forms, of course. Being shifted in time changed the circumstances of their happening. Now we are getting to what I wanted to tell you, Mr. Bradford—the reason why you are of any importance to me, and why I am telling this story. There was a man named Terry Blood, once named Christopher, married a member of the Orloff family, a woman named Katja. She was once called Katherine-Anne. They had at least two children together, and one of them was Polyphema Blood. She was once named Scott Summers and, like him, she was a Cyclops.”
Amos Bradford's breath caught in his throat. He froze for a few moments before he burst out laughing. “You are suggesting my wife was...a man?”
“The echo of one, yes.”
“Preposterous. What do you mean, 'an echo'?”
“Compensation. Individuals can't always be perfectly erased—sometimes they are reborn in new identities, in different times. As I said. In certain legends, your lost kin are called 'the Ghost Family.'”
“This is all completely unbelievable.”
“Of course you would think so. It will never happen, now. To you it will always be just a fantasy.”
“Yes, and now I know that the reports of your being mad, Odd John, are true. Did you take away anything useful from this future, anyway? Is the dollar going up? Do we enter the War?”
“Don't be so cynical, Mr. Bradford. And it's not what I took from my future. It's what I'm about to take.”
There came a knock, gently rapping at the chamber door.
“You must feel that there is some validity to my words, Black Raven,” John continued. “After all, it would go some length towards explaining where your family went. They were the X-Men reborn, and adventure is in their blood, even if that blood is transmitted backwards in time.”
“You're mad. Now what did you mean about being 'about to take' something from your future?”
“Open the door, Mr. Bradford. Be a good host.”
Amos opened the door, of what he was sure was his own volition. “Logan!” he exclaimed. “I understood you'd gone home, back across the border...” And now he looked down. Seated in a wheelchair, his paralyzed legs covered with a blanket, was a bald man with a grandfatherly smile on his face.
“Who is this?”
“This is Chuck, Raven. I call him Chuck, anyway.”
“I believe that Mr. Wainwright has introduced me already,” the bald man said. “I am Professor Xavier.”
“But you—you—didn't exist! Two times over!”
“I was erased, it's true, but now I am here to complete my mission. Mr. Wainwright, might you explain?”
“After my affair on the island, Mr. Bradford, I came into contact with the astral traveler Doctor Omega,” Wainwright said. “He took me traveling—I shared adventures with him alongside the robot X-51. During our journeys I learned from him about what his people call a 'Watcher'—a psychic projection of oneself meant to gather energy until it returned to creator, to merge back into them and help them heal after suffering fatal damage. I wanted to learn the future of the mutants, true, but I also needed to heal myself after my crippling injuries on the island...and move on to the next stage of evolution.”
“What do you mean, next stage of evolution?” Bradford inquired.
“I mean that my mutant dream is not possible in this reality. I must find another space in which to grow a nation for my people. And to reach that space, I will need more power than what I already have. All that once was part of our timeline is now contained in Charles Xavier. Together he and I will become one, as we once were.” He paused, and then murmured, almost to himself, “I'm sure this how Quire managed to pull it off...”
“I should level with you, Raven. I worked with Chuck in that old life,” Logan said. “I'm just your handyman to you, but they used to call me Wolverine. I'm still here because I was born too early, before Wanda changed the timeline. I just wanted to help Chuck get back to where he was needed before moving on to my next job.”
Bradford had nothing to say now, but he was just realizing that he and Andy had always found the Canadian a little strange.
“Come to me, Charles,” Wainwright said then. “To me, my X-Man.”
Adam-X stepped back, and let Charles wheel over to where Wainwright was seated. Slowly, Wainwright relaxed as Charles reached for him, and it seemed to Amos like the mutant's life slipped away from him even before Xavier's fingers touched him.
They were both consumed in a brilliant gold light—there seemed to be a brief angelic resonance through this gold light, as Xavier slipped from his wheelchair into Wainwright's body, and vanished completely. “The moment has been prepared for,” Wainwright said then, his voice nearly smothered by the heavenly choir.
Then it was over.
And when it was over, both Xavier and Wainwright were gone. In their place was another figure, who seemed even less human than Wainwright.
He had Charles' bald head, but that head was larger than even Odd John's had been. His skin was an unusual pinkish hue, and his clothes had changed now to something that looked like a blue toga. His eyes were devoid of pupil and iris alike, but sparkled with infinite wisdom.
“As I have used a Watcher, so have I become a Watcher,” this creature said. “The Watcher. I—I am a witness.”
Bradford felt ill in the creature's presence—it seemed to be releasing a sort of invisible force which was affecting his brain strangely. A million sentences crammed themselves onto his tongue, but the one that emerged was, “Did—did it hurt?”
“Pain, then nothing,” the Watcher said, grinning. “I am restored. I was Charles Xavier as I was John Wainwright—and my journey is only just beginning.”
Then he turned his head aside. “But I...I shouldn't interfere any further, should I? First I saw the evils of my war, with Erik, and then I...well. I ruined the Maximoff's girl life, didn't I...?” And he nodded. “As with Omega's people, I shall take an oath of non-interference. My life is no longer among the mutants, as I am now beyond them. But I remember their story, and even if I don't interfere, I—can still spread that story, and the other stories that I...Watch.” He nodded again, as if this were all right. All part of a greater plan.
“I wonder who I can share it with...I wonder...” And now Amos' mind was starting to reel. “Someone with talent. Who will make its telling unforgettable, even if they make their own changes. I—yes. Lee and Kirby...”
There was a flash of golden light, then, and the marvelous sight was gone.
Amos stood up, checking to see if the other man was also gone. The other man...who? Adam something? He couldn't remember...
He looked over, and saw that Logan was watching him, observing his attending to an empty room. “Something wrong, Raven?”
“Oh, Logan, I—I didn't hear you come in,” the Black Raven replied. “How—how long have you been there?”
“Not long,” Logan said. “You're actin' like you're coming out of a dream. Remember anything?”
“A dream? I—why, yes. Yes, I do think I recall a bit of a dream. There was a man—” And he pointed to where the odd-eyed man had sat, and where his blond bodyguard had stood. Then, their image was gone from his mind.
“—sorry. To a young fellow like yourself I must seem like a silly old man.”
Logan said nothing, at least at first. “Hey, Raven, there's something I wanna talk to you about. I, uh, I gotta get out.”
“You're leaving?”
“Yeah, I think so. I, uh, I got a job offer elsewhere. Actually, it's, uh, overseas. Against the Krauts.”
“You're joining the Army? It must be the Canadian one, then. The Yanks are a little slow on the draw, aren't they?”
“Yep. I know where to hedge my bets. Besides, it's where I was born.”
“Well, good luck, Logan. Andy and I will do fine without you. Take care.”
Logan nodded, and took a cigar from his pocket. He was just lighting it as he left Amos alone in the room.
What was it he'd been thinking about before he'd come in here? Not any guest, certainly—still a drought. There was the bookkeeping, of course, but that was hardly worthy of consideration. No, he'd been thinking about something while he'd been doing his bookkeeping.
He'd been thinking about his family.
Gone now these six years, with no trace at all in the world. A tragedy which would haunt him to his dying day.
But he had a strange feeling now, as if he had some idea of where they were. Somewhere out there, in this wide universe of theirs, they were having some sort of adventure. They were parts of an adventure at the very least—a great deed of heroism that echoed across the stars. (Perhaps they themselves were not the heroes.) He accepted only then that they were gone, and with that acceptance, he knew that they could never be gone, truly, as long as he remembered them.
It was a cold winter night around the Black Raven, and the man who named the lodge for himself was smiling. Though death would find him within the year, he had closure of a sort on his long-lost loved ones. Great suffering had passed over him—and now there was peace. Pain, then nothing.
Chapter 2: Annotations
Summary:
Notes on the references made in "Pain, Then Nothing."
Chapter Text
The Black Raven and its owner Amos Bradford, also called the Black Raven, along with Andy the groundskeeper, are from the film The Black Raven (1943); many of the details described in this story are borrowed from that film.
Bradford's first guest, Adam Neramani, is better known as Adam-X the X-Treme. He first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics in X-Force Annual #2 (1993). His attempts to light his heroin-spoon with his blood refers to his powers, wherein he can light oxygenated blood on fire.
Odd John Wainwright is from Olaf Stapledon's Odd John (1935). Wainwright is a psychic mutant, Homo superior , who tries to take over the world. He seemingly perishes when his mutant colony is destroyed, but he evidently persisted for some time after. The title of this story is derived from the last line of Odd John : “Suddenly there was blinding light and noise and pain, then nothing.”
Lloyd and Elwyn are Lloyd and Elwyn Clayton, from the film Dead Men Walk (1943). Their sister Paula Clayton is from Weird Woman (1944). “Robert” is Robert Parry Renault, from The Monster and the Girl (1941) and Dr. Renault's Secret (1942). Leo Renault is better known as Leo Grainger, and his story was told in the film Fog Island (1945). “The adoptee, Paul” is Paul Renault, from Zombies on Broadway (1945). The links between these seven siblings was told in my story “Brotherly Love.”
Polyphema and Riven Blood, and Phorcys and Thusa Bradford, are from my fiction, first being mentioned in “Brotherly Love” and the Bloody Mary story “The Lost Prince,” appearing in full in the Bloody Mary adventure “The Antlered God.” Their fate is revealed in that latter story.
Charles Xavier is, of course, Professor X of the X-Men; his father, Brian, also hails from the X-Men comics. Dr. Jerry Xavier faced the Moon Killer in the film Doctor X (1932). Maurice Xavier's career as a new kind of vampire was shown in the film The Return of Doctor X (1939). Alexis Xavier and the circumstances of his death were depicted in The Amazing Mr. X (1948). One of these men was the father of Dr. James Bragan, whose experiments on a relative of Krakoa were the subject of The Revenge of Doctor X (1970).
James Xavier was the subject of X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963). Cain Marko, the Juggernaut, is also from the X-Men comics, as is Magneto.
Zahl Doone and the Stone God fought Bloody Mary in my story “The Psychic's Corpse.” Jean Grey is mentioned as being a descendant of the titular figure of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
The psychic vampire Jean and Xavier fought is from Cyril M. Kornbluth's “The Mindworm” (1950). Here he is synonymous with the Spider-Man villain also called the Mindworm.
James Clarke Wildman is the “real” name of Doc Savage; Monk Mayfair, as mentioned here, is one of Doc's associates. Hank McCoy may be a counterpart of William Grier “Pauncho” van Veelar, son of Monk's alternate universe self “Jocko” Simmons—Simmons and van Veelar were seen in Philip Jose Farmer's A Feast Unknown (1969) and its sequels.
Fevvers is the winged performer from Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus (1984). Elijah Snow is the main character of Warren Ellis' Planetary (1999-2009).
Dr. Solar, whom Cyclops modeled his costume on, first appeared in Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom #1 (Oct. 1962), by Gold Key Comics. Legion, aka David Haller, is Professor X's son from the comics; Cassandra Nova is also from the comics. The Professor's second son, Thomas, is the titular protagonist of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas (2003) and its sequels.
The Shiar of the X-Men comics are mentioned to originate on Mongo, from the Flash Gordon comic strip and its many adaptations. This idea is borrowed from Dennis Power; see below. Senator Kelly is also from the X-Men comics.
Doctor Omega is the eponymous figure from Arnould Galopin's Doctor Omega (1906); here, as in many other stories, he is a stand-in for the First Doctor, from Doctor Who . It is from Doctor Who that the Watcher and its role in regeneration come. X-51 is better known to fans of Marvel Comics as Machine-Man; that he was a companion of the Doctor is a detail from my story “Claws of the Cat, Fangs of the Bat.”
“Quire” is Quentin Quire, from the X-Men comics. At the end of his first story arc he undergoes a secondary mutation which causes him to ascend to a higher form of life. The Watcher whom Wainwright/Xavier transforms into is also from Marvel Comics. “Lee and Kirby” are of course Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who created the majority of the early Marvel Universe.
Certain other references made in this story will be explained in the next chapter.
Chapter 3: Children of the Atom: The Argument for the X-Men in the Crossover Universe
Summary:
The X-Men are usually considered fictional in the context of the Crossover Universe put forth by Philip Jose Farmer and fleshed out by Win Scott Eckert, Sean Lee Levin, and many others. Here is my argument as to how they could hypothetically fit.
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Before delving into this essay, I want to preface it by addressing a few issues that this sort of essay presents: first of all, I am far from the be-all end-all voice on how crossovers work. I cannot claim to manage the “Crossover Universe” depicted in Win Scott Eckert and Sean Lee Levin's Crossovers volumes, much less any associated shared universes such as the Wold Newton Universe; so this is just my own assertion of will at play here. Second, my attempts to place the X-Men in the Crossover Universe in some capacity may seem frivolous as the circumstances under which I have done so still place them in an alternate reality, albeit one which leaves echoes in the Crossover Universe. Third, said echoes mostly manifest in my stories of the adventuress Bloody Mary, who is linked to a specific dimensional “tilt” of the Crossover Universe known as Terra-X, which differs from the Crossover Universe in several important ways. Fourth, I am choosing to host this essay on Archive of Our Own, a fan-fiction site, which undermines the “legitimacy” of this essay. However, I stand by what I say in this essay, as I believe that the X-Men do have a place in this Universe—or they once did. They are not only astonishing heroes on par with many of the great adventurers of the Crossover Universe, but they are no longer the most incredible figures of the CU. While the official policy is that the CU is superhero-light, one can still find versions of Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and others—including Wolverine.
The belief that the X-Men existed in some form in the Crossover Universe is not unprecedented. I would like to refer readers to Dennis Power's essays “A Post-Facto Analysis of the Denton Affair,” “Casting L.O.T.S.: The Legion of the Strange,” and “The Lethal Luthors: Odd John Wainwright,” though concepts from his entire Secret History series will be referenced. I agree with many but not all of the assertions made in those essays—for example, I am unsure if the events of The Rocky Horror Picture Show had such a prominent effect on the inspiration for the X-Men and the Avengers, even if it did take place in the Crossover Universe. But I do believe in a connection between Odd John Wainwright and Charles Xavier, albeit a different one from that which Power posits; I also believe the X-Men were founded in 1955, and that Charles Xavier worked in close contact with Niles Caulder aka Damien Harmon, as the X-Men and the Doom Patrol were part of the same organization (hence their similarities). Other commonalities between Power's work and mine will be pointed out where relevant.
Before proceeding, some explanations should be made concerning the nature of the mutants who made up the X-Men, whom Dennis Power terms “Oddians.” Both Olaf Stapledon's account of John Wainwright and the X-Men comics refer to these mutants as Homo superior, but there are substantial differences between the book and the comics. As one might expect the book not nearly as “superhero-y” as the comic books. The Oddians seen there do not usually possess any powers outside of psychic abilities like telepathy; but they are usually superhumanly intelligent, maturing mentally at an accelerated rate, though their physical development is slowed. Most strikingly, the Oddians are physically disfigured by human standards, resembling John Wainwright but sometimes being more notably disabled, missing eyes or limbs. Despite these appearances, however, they are still sexually appealing to humans due to an enhanced set of pheromones. Finally, they are usually very long-lived, with some in Odd John being over two hundred years old.
With some work, we can reconcile the X-Men with these more inhuman mutants. One must keep in mind that while the mutant population was always an exceptional minority, the sample of mutants we saw in Odd John was very small. It is possible that some mutants were human-looking; it is equally possible that, through psionics or hormonal manipulation, some could take on human appearances. Many of the X-Men wore masks, and while this was a comic book conceit to hide their secret identities it could have also been to help disguise their unsettling appearances, which might have set back human-mutant relations. Mutants with extremely different appearances like Kurt Wagner are the product of unusual circumstances (Wagner was the son of Kyra Zelas, who was not a mutant but what the comics might call a mutate; a human given mutant powers by external occurrence). The case of Kurt Wagner also suggests that there may have been some reality to Charles Xavier's invention of the image-inducer. (Xavier himself was human-looking due to his nature as a Watcher.) Reconciling the powers of the X-Men can also be solved by assuming that some exaggeration took place; for example, while Sunfire may have been pyrokinetic, he probably didn't fly, or he did so with mechanical means. Many of the powers of the various X-Men can be explained as being related to telepathy, telekinesis, temperature manipulation, astral manipulation, and other psychic abilities. Storm, for example, could control weather by manipulating thermal currents with pyro- and cryokinesis. Wolverine could telekinetically reshape his bone mass to form his claws.
Regarding the origin of the Oddians, there are three possibilities. Power suggests that Oddian syndrome is a close cousin of Down syndrome, a disadvantageous mutation rather than the next stage of evolution—while the Oddians are empowered by their mutations they are also disabled by their physical bodies and by their common misunderstandings of human emotion. The comics also put forth the idea that there was a First Mutant, known as En Sabah Nur or Apocalypse. En Sabah Nur was the son of General Immortus and may have been the deliberate product of genetic engineering with far-future technology—but one has to wonder what Immortus would think he could gain from deliberately creating the Oddian gene. A third possibility also exists, presented by John Wainwright's capacity to create a Watcher and regenerate. The Oddians may be the descendants of an ancient or time-erased experiment carried out on Earth by Rassilon, during the Dark Times on Gallifrey—we know that during those Times Rassilon initiated a plan of mass-scale genetic engineering to make life around the universe more similar in appearance to the Time Lords. He may have also been interested in trying to convert humans into Time Lords, endowed with psychic powers and the ability to regenerate. Similarly it could have been the work of Faction Paradox or an agent from the Time War; in any case, it might settle the matter if one could find an Oddian with two hearts.
For now, I posit the following timeline. The X-Men (and the Doom Patrol) became active in 1955, under the shared auspices of Charles Xavier and Niles Caulder. The Doom Patrol was disbanded in 1966 with the deaths of most of its members (in an incident which also led to the retirement of many of the primary X-Men), but Xavier and Caulder had created auxiliary teams in 1961 and 1962, respectively, which carried on until they ended their activities wholesale in 1968 when Wanda Maximoff removed the actions of Charles Xavier from the timeline.
The original X-Men team were described in “Pain, Then Nothing.” They were Scott (Cyclops) Summers, Jean (Marvel Girl/Phoenix) Grey, Hank (Beast) McCoy, Warren (Angel) Worthington III, Bobby (Iceman) Drake, and eventually Alex (Havok) Summers and Lorna (Polaris) Dane. The original Doom Patrol consisted of Niles (The Chief) Caulder, Larry (Negative Man) Trainor, Cliff (Robotman) Steele, Rita (Elasti-Girl) Farr, and, eventually Garfield (Beast Boy/Changeling) Logan. I didn't offer explanations for the Doom Patrol in “Pain, Then Nothing,” so here I will offer my theories.
I generally agree with Power's assertions regarding Niles Caulder and Robotman; Niles Caulder was also the wheelchair-bound vampire-hunter Damien Harmon. His forced allegiance with Dracula prepared him for his experiences with the Doom Patrol—his adventures in the course of this allegiance were depicted in a book series by Robert Lory which began with Dracula Returns (1973). Robotman was the same individual known as Adam Link, the Human Robot, and the Robert Crane incarnation of Robotman—he may well have also been the Vision but an explanation is necessary for his modified powers during this point of his life.
Negative Man was supposedly test pilot Larry Trainor, who stumbled onto a mysterious black pool after being horribly burnt in a plane crash. The pool bonded to him and created a radioactive double that he could psychically control. He was garbed in bandages both to shield people against the radiation of his double and to hide his burns. This was all a cover story—Larry Trainor did not exist, or rather, he was an alias for Ralph Dibny. Negative Man was the same individual as the Elongated Man, whom Dennis Power asserts also masqueraded as Spider-Man's foe the Sandman on behalf of the FBI. He had taken on government work because his father was FBI agent Eel O'Brien, aka Plastic Man. Rita Farr, Elasti-Girl, was Ralph Dibny's sister or half-sister. They both had their father's stretching powers, but to disguise his involvement with the Doom Patrol Dibny wore bandages to hide his face, and bound special dyes to his skin when he needed to stretch as “Negative Man”'s double. These dyes made him appear unearthly, thus blurring the connection between Dibny and Trainor. To further blur their connection, Rita would usually only use her elastic abilities to increase or decrease in size.
Garfield Logan was the son of Dr. Mark Logan, who appears to have been an illegitimate child sired during the long life of Logan, the Wolverine. Logan's mutation skipped a generation but remained dormant in young Garfield until he was bitten by a strange green monkey in the African jungle. This monkey appears to have been an experiment created by Mallah, the rogue mangani who would later fight the Doom Patrol—it appears that Mallah was attempting to use a lesser mangani as a sort of biological index for the genes of a variety of lifeforms. He created a serum that matched together a variety of genes in order to archive them for future use—Mallah looked up to Dr. Moreau and wanted to emulate his experiments, and considered the possibilities of using animals to incubate genes to resurrect extinct species. (This would eventually result in the X-Men foe Sauron.) In order to stabilize this serum, Mallah had to use a compound that involved chlorophyll; by some twist of chemistry this turned the pygmy mangani green. The experiences left the mangani insane, and when he escaped he blindly attacked young Gar in a rage. His saliva contained enough of the serum to pass it on to Gar, who metabolized it after a long fever. He would not have been able to do so if he was not a mutant through his grandfather. Garfield gained the ability to take on traits like those of the animals Mallah experimented with, which included many African specimens like gorillas and elephants. Though his body would change (outside of turning green) it was not as drastic as it was in the comics—he looked more like the creatures of Dr. Moreau than the actual animals themselves. However, this still let him help out with Doom Patrol activities, when his ego didn't get in the way.
There were also two additional cells set up by Xavier and Caulder. Xavier's second team consisted of Logan (Wolverine), Ororo (Storm) Munroe, Piotr (Colossus) Rasputin, John (Thunderbird) Proudstar, Shiro (Sunfire) Yoshida, Sean (Banshee) Cassidy, Kurt (Nightcrawler) Wagner, and Gabriel (Vulcan) Summers. Caulder's auxiliary team consisted of Valentina (Negative Woman) Vostok, Joshua (Tempest) Clay, and Arani (Celsius) Desai (with Cliff Steel aiding this team as well). Both of these teams will be dealt with as they appear.
In the summer of 1955, the X-Men first clashed with Magneto. He was threatening the base at Cape Canaveral with his powers, and it took the powers of all the X-Men to defeat him. It seems likely that Professor X had advance warning of Magneto's attack on the base and they were able to intercept him; there were few witnesses to their battle. This initial clash with Magneto would be the first of many, and this battle with the X-Men caused Magneto to do research on Xavier's recent doings. Through this, he gained awareness of Xavier's association with Niles Caulder. Magneto was embittered by Xavier's close work with a non-mutant—he viewed Caulder's team, which had just faced a terrorist organization called the Brotherhood, as a group of mutant-pretenders, exploiting “freakhood” for cheap battles against criminals. Despite his initial belief that the Brotherhood were no more than a pack of human criminals, however, Magneto learned that the leader of the Brotherhood was a mutant. Calling himself “the Brain,” his name was lost to history—he possessed a unique gene, also possessed by beings like the Ultra-Humanite—that enabled him to survive as a mere disembodied brain, attached to a mechanized jar. Through psychic association the Brain introduced Magneto to the rest of the Brotherhood: Mallah, an unnaturally intelligent mangani whom the Brain had further enhanced; and Madame Rouge, who is depicted as a shapeshifter. It is likely she was Kyra Zelas, whom Dennis Power also links with the comics character Mystique. She was probably also the same as the comic book character Rogue, who eventually joined the X-Men—her powers to steal others' superpowers recalls the adaptive abilities of Kyra Zelas.
Magneto and the Brain forged a pact to expand the Brotherhood to include other mutants. In the meantime, Madame Rouge contacted a former lover of hers to go after the X-Men, while Magneto formed his cell, and while the Brain plotted revenge against the Doom Patrol.
The mutant who next attracted the attention of the X-Men was the Vanisher, who faced them in the Spring of 1956. Madame Rouge had once borne his child when he went by the alias Azazel; his ability was that he could psychically tap into the same sort of forces later used in transporters by the United Federation, enabling him to teleport. His son by Madame Rouge, Kurt Wagner, would have the same power. The X-Men were able to mop up the Vanisher before he caused too much damage, and Professor X used his powers to erase the Vanisher's knowledge of his mutant abilities.
Next, the X-Men found themselves clashing with the Blob. Fred Dukes was a carnie tied onto the same traveling circus which employed the infamous Madame Estrella and Ortega; Dukes, despite his ugly personality, was rather popular around the carnival (a detail likely aided by his Oddian status) and so he aided Estrella in her bullying of a pair of twins who had a mesmerism act. The sister, Wanda, would make gestures that would hypnotize the audience, apparently causing them to hallucinate objects moving of their own accord, and her brother, Pietro, moving as superhuman speeds. These twins, who had the surname Maximoff, were Romani, the children of Marya Maximoff, who was a sister of Estrella's hated rival Maleva. Marya's nephew Bela had been the werewolf who infected Larry Talbot; it is possible then that the genes that enable lycanthropy are linked to the Oddian gene. Her husband, Django, may have been a descendant of one of the many men who went by that name in the American West, who may have ended up in Eastern Europe at some point. However, it seems as if Django Maximoff was not the father of the twins—instead, their father may have been the man who became interested in the twins after the Blob's battle with the X-Men brought them to his attention.
Fred Dukes claimed that, per his surname, he was the son of a Duke, but he was actually the son of a Baron—more properly, a Baroni. His father was gangster Mike Baroni, who requested Amos Bradford's services in The Black Raven. Dukes' mutant power was that he could psychically convert his body to an immaterial state, wherein he could metabolize mass into himself upon regaining physicality. When taking some time away from the carnival, when they were stopped in Pennsylvania, he was attacked by a strange reddish gelatin-like creature. This was a fragment of the creature which was presently attacking a nearby small town, in the incident that would be depicted as The Blob (1958). In trying to fend off the Blob, Dukes unknowingly used his powers and absorbed it into himself, and its alien nature triggered a secondary mutation—he could now psychically control his mass and density, just as the Blob could increase its own size and mass, to make himself theoretically indestructible. After he learned of his mutant nature he attacked the X-Men, but was ultimately defeated, despite the powers the Blob gave him.
Hearing the account of Dukes' battle with the X-Men, which involved several other members of the carnival going after the team, led Magneto to investigate the Blob. He would later recruit him into his organization, but for now he was more interested in the Maximoff Twins, who worked under the same roof. He learned that Wanda's powers were not in mesmerism but in a sort of low-key probability manipulation that coincidentally caused objects to move telekinetically. Pietro's superspeed was also real—his Oddian brain allowed him to psychically control chronons and therefore move at a different rate of time from everyone else, though he was still bound by the limits of his concentration and therefore was, like the Flash, no faster than a particularly high-powered automobile. Professor X had defeated the Blob and his carny minions by erasing their memories, as he had done with the Vanisher—the modifications he made to their minds now made them realize that the Maximoffs didn't use trickery for their work. Dukes, Estrella, and the other carnies turned on the pair, and Magneto saved their lives with his powers. He was able to convince them to swear a life-debt to him for this, in order to convince them to join the Brotherhood.
Magneto's Brotherhood eventually formalized its first roster around the same time that the Brain's Brotherhood added the alien Garguax to their numbers. The “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” also included Jason (Mastermind) Wyngarde, identified by Dennis Power as the son of Henry (Brainwave) King; and Mortimer Toynbee, also called the Toad. The Toad's powers and appearance manifested as a result of his ancestry—the Toynbees were English cousins to the Scottish MacTeams, who suffered from a degenerative illness that caused them to revert to frog- or toad-like creatures. Studies into whether or not the MacTeams have Innsmouth blood in them remain inconclusive. Mortimer Toynbee not only had a toad-like anatomy but he could use his Oddian telekinesis to aid his strong legs in jumping. The MacTeam family from whom Toad hailed were depicted in the film The Maze (1953).
The first duel between the X-Men and the Brotherhood would, as would become the trend, end in the Brotherhood's defeat. This battle took place in the autumn of 1957.
The following Spring the X-Men had their first encounter with Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Dennis Power's account of the Sub-Mariner seems largely accurate; Namor was also the inspiration for Aquaman and Neptune Perkins. Both Magneto and the X-Men were curious if Namor was a mutant, and each tried to recruit him to their respective causes, to no avail. The battle deepened Namor's enmity for the surface-dwellers, as he had become an enemy of both the Hulk and the Fantastic Four by this point.
Around this time, there were rumblings with the Doom Patrol as they carried out their own operations. While their primary foes were the Brain's Brotherhood, the “Brotherhood of Evil,” they also fought with General Immortus, a centuries-old conqueror who extended his life with a secret potion. Immortus sustained his wealth by means of a secret diamond mine, which may have been one of the mines of King Solomon which Allan Quatermain sought. If Immortus spent long periods of time working in Africa in the areas of the mines, then his immortality drug may have been the kavuru substance used by Tarzan and his family. By the time he fought the Doom Patrol, Immortus had lost access to his drug and had begun to age into an old man—evidently Fu Manchu and other criminal masterminds with access to longevity drugs denied his requests to share. Immortus' loss of access to the kavuru treatment may have been linked to Tarzan's reception of the same drug. That is to say that at some point Tarzan may have learned that Immortus was using the drug just as he was and decided to cut him off from it, probably leading to a clash between the Jungle Lord and Immortus' criminal forces.
During their battles the Doom Patrol had a number of personal quarrels due to their perceived freakhood, just as the X-Men did. There was the matter of Steve “Mento” Dayton's frankly disturbing crush on Elasti-Girl. There was also drama over how Gar Logan fit into the team's roster. Too young to be a proper Doom Patrol member, Beast Boy made at least one notable attempt to form a “superhero” team of his own. In the small town of Happy Harbor, New Jersey, Logan managed to arrange a meeting between Bruce Wayne Jr. (Robin), Lyta Trevor (Wonder Woman's daughter and her future successor to the role), Barry Allen (the Flash), Roy Harper (Green Arrow), and Joshua Clay (Tempest, who would later be recruited to Caulder's secondary team). A young beatnik named Lucas Carr witnessed this meeting and, even though the assembled heroes refused to band together under the yoke of a preteen, he passed the story along to his friends, making up details based on a Japanese movie he'd seen a couple of years back called Warning from Space , which featured starship-like aliens. In the end he had two versions of the story: the first was that a team made up of Robin, Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy, a “Wonder Girl,” a “Kid Flash,” an “Aqualad,” plus “Beast Boy,” had saved Happy Harbor from some menace, most often named as the bad weather the town had been facing lately. (Carr didn't see a demonstration of Joshua Clay's powers and so when he heard the name “Tempest” he instantly thought of water, thanks to a recent Shakespeare reading in his lit class; hence “Aqualad.”) The second version changed Robin to Batman and Green Arrow to Green Lantern, and made Tempest out to be Aquaman and the green-skinned Beast Boy out to be the Martian Manhunter. He also involved Superman with this fictitious league. It is unknown if Gar Logan ever learned the seeds he'd sown when, over the next few months and years, exaggerated versions of Carr's story passed into the hands of a certain comics company, who began writing stories of what could have been if these teams had been real.
Returning then to the X-Men: they next fought the Brotherhood again when they tried to recruit the Blob to their side. After this they battled Unus the Untouchable, an Oddian who had a telekinetic force field around himself that made him, as his name suggested, untouchable. Afterwards they traveled to Europe in search of Xavier's old foe Lucifer. Dennis Power says that Lucifer was the individual whom Philip Jose Farmer called Baron Igescu. That may have been true, but what was Xavier's history with Lucifer? The comics say that Lucifer crippled Xavier when they first clashed, though Xavier stopped his plot at the time. We have seen that Xavier's disability had another reason. In truth, Lucifer, whoever he was, was an advance agent for General Immortus, whom Xavier and Niles Caulder mutually feared. However, Lucifer came from a time wherein Immortus had long since reneged on the title of “General.” It was no coincidence that the X-Men encountered another team of indivudals while attempting to intervene in Lucifer's European plot.
X-Men #9 tell us that the X-Men fought the Avengers, specifically Captain America, Iron Man, Giant Man, the Wasp, and Thor. This was true, but as this encounter occurred in the late 1950s, Captain America was not present, as he was not defrosted until the early '60s. Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man, and the Wasp had not worked previously as a team but always seemed to cross each others' paths. (Giant Man's placement in the CU, along with the Wasp's, is implied in my short story “The Demon Dolls,” Odd Tales of Wonder #6, Dec. 2017. They use technology utilizing both herakleophorbia and the dimension-bending metal of the planet Rheton. Both these substances compromise the laws of physics that would ordinarily prevent their powers from working.) They had met before, along with the Hulk, during one of Thor's scrapes with his brother Loki, and they had each also met the Sub-Mariner, sometimes at the same time as the others. Very recently they had once more been mutually targeted by a single enemy, and faced Kang the Conqueror, an evil time-traveler; shortly thereafter, they were challenged by a man calling himself Immortus. They had ascertained that Kang had been the power behind Lucifer this whole time. (The comics would refrain from using Kang, calling the alien warlord “the Supreme One” instead. It is possible that the Supreme One did exist and was Kang's agent.) Kang used Lucifer's plots to attempt to steer his younger self, General Immortus, to success. He was reliant on such success to maintain his existence.
Kang's origin seems to be as follows: in one possible future General Immortus either destroyed the Doom Patrol or eluded them successfully long enough to find a way to restore his youth. Deciding to expand his operations in time as well as space, he set himself up as a warlord in the distant past. He accomplished the latter feat by obtaining a time machine and journeying to ancient Egypt, which records indicate as his possible birthplace; Dr. Francine Rainsford is of the opinion that Immortus was born in northern Africa, perhaps under the name “Nathaniel de Molay,” as a son of one of the Templar Knights who aligned themselves with the alien mi-go, whose account is described elsewhere. The suggestion of the name Nathaniel came from a stranger who helped the fallen Knight Jacques de Molay deliver his son, a stranger who claimed to be the embodiment of the Apocalypse.
It was in ancient Egypt, his possible birthplace, that Immortus set himself up as a political leader under the name Rama-Tut. During this time he sired a child which he recognized carried the Oddian gene; in a typically manic display of self-satisfaction the former General believed his child was the first mutant of its kind, and so he called it a name which would later be rendered as “En Sabah Nur,” ostensibly meaning “the First One.” Rama-Tut would eventually clash with the Fantastic Four, wherein he received a reminder of the existence of Reed Richards, whom he'd heard of in his former life in the 20th Century as General Immortus. He admired Richards nearly as much as he admired Richards' rival Victor von Doom, and so from then on out he claimed to be descended from both men. For all he knew they were actually his descendants.
After his time as Rama-Tut, Immortus took on the alias of Kang and initiated a variety of schemes throughout time, using technology from the future. In his travels through time he eventually encountered an older (but still youth-restored) version of himself who had reverted to the Immortus name. According to the files of Tony Stark, these two incarnations of the former General Immortus became bitter enemies, and clashed many times throughout time and space, while still ensuring to keep their past separate from their present and future.
Immortus would snub Kang for failing to predict intervention in his Lucifer plan. The alliance of Giant Man, Wasp, Thor, and Iron Man had heard reports than an agent of Kang's was operating out in Europe. They were unaware of the X-Men as they were a secret organization and as such they were suspicious of them, and the two clashed. Fortunately they came to an understanding in time for the X-Men to stop Lucifer's plans, defeating Kang in the process.
The next story of the X-Men depicts their encounter with Ka-Zar, in the so-called “Savage Land.” Dennis Power, in his article on Spider-Man, identified Ka-Zar as Lord Grandrith, the ersatz Tarzan depicted in Philip Jose Farmer's A Feast Unknown (1969) and its sequels. However, Win Scott Eckert has since determined that Lord Grandrith and his relative Doc Caliban existed in a parallel universe. Perhaps in the universe the X-Men ended up in after they were removed from the Crossover Universe proper, the Ka-Zar they encountered was Lord Grandrith, but in the Crossover Universe the Ka-Zar they met was David Rand, the pulp character who originally held the name Ka-Zar, who was still alive in 1959. As per Power's theories, the Savage Land was actually the comics' name for Caprona, the Land That Time Forgot. Ka-Zar was in Caprona at the same time as the X-Men because he was tracking Mallah, of the Brotherhood. Mallah had come to Caprona to secure dinosaur DNA for his genetic experiments—he was joined in this venture by Hector Hammond, a scientist who came when he heard that Mallah's presence attracted Ka-Zar. Hammond believed that Ka-Zar was a member of the Wold Newton Family, and, having discovered proof of the existence of the beneficial mutations received by the Wold Newton meteorite witnesses of 1795, he wanted to examine Ka-Zar's physiology to find out how to reproduce the Wold Newton mutations in himself. He also privately believed that Mallah's unusual intelligence was the product of a brain-enhancing meteor.
In this universe, Hammond never became a super-intelligent criminal nemesis of Green Lantern. In the highly distorted version of events told by the comics in X-Men #10, Hammond's presence was deleted, and Mallah became the Man-Ape Maa-Gor. The X-Men defeated “Maa-Gor,” and Hammond with him, and David Rand decided to retire to Caprona, which featured the sort of jungle environment which had become home to him. Mallah escaped with the aid of the Brain and Madame Rouge, but Hammond was returned to the States, where the X-Men were forced to conclude there no charges to pin against him. Hammond escaped with genetic samples from some of the Caprona dinosaurs, which he would eventually pass on to his son John.
The next X-Men story features the capture of Magneto by the enigmatic being known as the Stranger. The Stranger may have been based on the same “Watcher” whom Lee and Kirby met in the early '60s, and therefore may have been a tip of the hat to why the X-Men were no longer part of the present reality. A powerful being had taken them away, just like the Watcher-like being took away Magneto in this story. It may have also been a reference to the fact that Magneto remained largely inactive until the activation of Xavier's second cell of mutants, as he was planning the attack on Xavier Mansion which would be depicted in X-Men #17. During this time both the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver left his company, with the aid of Thor; the pair would share a few adventures with both Thor and Roy Harper before finding a home within Niles Caulder's organization. This would lead to a relationship between Wanda Maximoff and Cliff Steele.
The following accounts of the X-Men show their battle with the Juggernaut. When Charles Xavier retconned himself into history he had not only his biological brother James but eventually an adopted one, Cain Marko. Cain was the son of Kurt Marko, more properly Kurt Markoff—Kurt was the brother of famous hormone specialist Igor Markoff. In the early '40s Igor Markoff was murdered and impersonated by an unknown man. “Markoff” used the real Markoff's notes and methods to give people the disfiguring disease acromegaly. This was depicted in the film The Monster Maker (1944); a survivor of Markoff's attacks, Pat Lorenz, had her story further told in my Bloody Mary audio story The Lost November. While The Monster Maker ends with “Markoff”'s defeat, the false Markoff survived, and killed Igor's brother Kurt as well, impersonating him and stealing his wife. Cain was the product of their union.
Cain Marko and Charles Xavier fought together in the Korean War after a bitter and contentious childhood together. Cain ended up deserting from combat and found a cave which contained a mysterious ruby. This was the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak. The origin of this Gem remains a mystery. It may have been an Atlantean creation, or an artifact of the Thoan Lords; it may have also been related to the M'Krann Crystal. In any case, it appears to have been an ancient weapons system for endowing warriors with massive strength and durability. For some reason, only one was manufactured, probably because it enhanced negative personality traits such as rage and propensity towards violence. Cain was therefore a poor candidate for receiving the Gem's powers, as he had too much of his father's psychosis in him. He was buried alive with the Gem and it took him almost a decade to dig out with his newfound powers. When he emerged he sought revenge on Xavier in the guise of the Juggernaut. The X-Men defeated him, but he would return to plague them several times.
The X-Men would next face what were arguably their most deadly foes, the Sentinels. The Sentinels were originally humanoid robots based on designs by the late Dr. Vaughn Orloff, which were arguably stolen from Orloff's peer Alex Zorka. Their adapter, Dr. Bolivar Trask, was a brilliant roboticist and was able to significantly improve Orloff's designs using technology developed by early geniuses like Rossum, Rotwang, and Link. The Sentinels were self-ordering and self-generating, with a central machine, the Master Mold, possessing the ability to create more Sentinels. Citing the Cape Canaveral attacks and the fact that he was the head of a cabal of similarly-powered criminals, Trask labeled Magneto as the symbol of all mutantkind—the Sentinels would be built to hunt down and exterminate Magneto and his Brotherhood but also any other mutants, whom Trask believed would end up like Magneto sooner or later. Dennis Power says that the Sentinels attacked people with less severe mutations as well as Oddians and he is correct. The Sentinels were just as much of a threat to humans as they were to mutants. While the comics have Trask redeem himself and stop the Sentinels at the cost of his life, Trask survived the ordeal but was outraged by the backlash against him for the failures of his creations, and the destruction of the Sentinels by the X-Men. He joined a fledgling technology company called Cyberdyne Industries, a splinter of Yoyodyne Industries and predecessor of the Datadyne Corporation, with the intent of using its facilities to create a machine that would regulate mankind to keep it genetically pure, and thus safe from mutants. Trask was an obsessive man, as he had been an attorney before turning his mind to science; in his legal career, he had once known both Paul Kirk and Dan Richards, the men who had fought crime under the joined name of Manhunter. Trask had trained in martial arts with them and was known amongst his coworkers at Cyberdyne to subscribe to Kirk and Richards' strict codes of violence and honor, and this is where the stories of the “Cult of the Manhunter” ultimately came from, in the various forms in which they appeared in the comics.
In one potential future timeline, Trask's manipulation of Cyberdyne led to the creation of Skynet, which in turn created Terminators based off of the original idea of the Sentinels. The Terminators had combat programming modeled on the infamous mercenary Slade Wilson, enemy of Gar Logan and Rachel Summers. During the war against the machines the Terminators, as well as a legion of revived Sentinels, exterminated many surviving mutants, though one of them would survive to return to the past of the main timeline. While the human resistance, led by John Connor, sent agent Kyle Reese back to the 1980s to stop the creation of Skynet, one variation of this timeline saw these changes to history fail to occur. Connor initiated his next plan, which involved denying the machines solar energy. The machines adapted, capturing the surviving humans and using their bioelectricity as a power source. They also created a virtual reality for the humans to live inside, modeled after the late 20th Century. Within the network of the machines there was a program based off of Bolivar Trask called “The Architect.” The Architect played a role in the shifting of this Matrix to a new phase of existence when a rebellion arose against the machines based around the cult of “the One.” When the machines tried to repress this rebellion they used new types of Sentinels, which had changed to take on flying squid-like forms, against the resistance fighters.
The creation of the Sentinels and the horror they inflicted did not quell anti-mutant sentiment; it rather inflamed it, giving a platform to anti-mutant legislator Senator Kelly. In the wake of both the Sentinel threat and the rising political tensions created by Kelly, Professor X decided it was time for the X-Men to grow. He created two cadres of X-Men, which were split in the comics as the X-Men proper and “X-Factor.” It was at this time that he requested the assistance of Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Sunfire, Banshee, and Vulcan.
Storm was Ororo Munroe. Though her family lived in Kenya, her ancestors were Ghanaian, and her name was one of many traditional family names derived from that of her famous ancestor Oronooko. Her surname, Munroe, came from her adopted father Arn “Iron” Munroe, who was said to be one of Superman's children. Through Munroe, Ororo already had a solid grasp on the “superhero” business. She possessed both cryo- and pyrokinetic abilities that enabled her to manipulate air temperatures and, consequently, the weather.
Colossus was Piotr Rasputin, who was as per the comics a descendant of the infamous Grigori Rasputin. Consequently, he was also a descendant of James Moriarty, and thus he was a member of the Wold Newton Family. Colossus' mutation activated in response to the machine-waves of the Master Mold computer network, which were transmitted from a variety of locations, including one near his village in the USSR. Since his power was turning to metal—an apparent pseudo-Lamarckian reaction to the mechanical nature of the trigger of his power—he named himself Colossus after the Colossus of Rhodes. During his time as an X-Man, Rasputin encountered Dr. Charles Forbin, a government scientist interested in using Bolivar Trask's inventions for the greater good, and when he learned of the connection between Piotr and Trask's computers, Forbin named his new computer system, Colossus, after him (though he was also inspired by the tale of another man turned to metal, Jeremy Spensser). This would turn out to be an ill-suited name as the Colossus AI went rogue and tried to take over the world. When that failed it downloaded itself into the body of the Vision, with devastating consequences that will be seen below.
Nightcrawler, alias Kurt Wagner, was, as mentioned above, the child of Kyra Zelas and the mutant known as Azazel, who had fought the X-Men as the Vanisher. He possessed the Vanisher's ability to teleport but the serum which gave his mother her adaptive powers gave him a blue-skinned devil-like appearance. He faced persecution for this in his native Germany but was rescued from that life by Professor X.
Thunderbird was John Proudstar, an Apache. While he claimed descent from Winnetou, this may have been a boast on his behalf. Proudstar was not a mutant, but he had the same sort of superhuman senses, reflexes, speed, and strength as Captain America. Proudstar's father had been one of many minorities experimented on during World War II by the Weapon X program in order to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum, and that had dramatically limited the senior Proudstar's lifespan but not negated his ability to have children. John's brother James Proudstar was also superhumanly strong and was recruited by Hank Pym to succeed him as Giant Man in the '60s, after Pym's harrowing experience as Yellowjacket had caused his wife Janet van Dyne to leave him. Pym's colleague Bill Foster was one of the other heirs to the Giant Man title. In contrast to the rather offensive media that would occur later, James Proudstar never used the name “Apache Chief” while using Pym's herakleophorbia formula, just as Foster never stooped to calling himself “Black Goliath.”
Both the Banshee and Sunfire were enemies the X-Men had faced before. Sean Cassidy was the son of Charles Crossley, who possessed a seemingly-supernatural ability in the form of a shout that could kill. Crossley believed he was a devil, but his shout was actually a psychic projection, a manifestation of his Oddian powers. Crossley's twisted story was told by Robert Graves in The Shout (1929). Cassidy was made a pawn of Factor Three, a terrorist organization made up of the Vanisher, the Blob, Unus, the Mastermind, and a new mutant named Changeling. The name Changeling is a tip-off, as that was the name that Gar Logan would eventually take for himself, and Changeling's shape-shifting powers reflect those of the Elongated Man, who was posing as Negative Man when working with Niles Caulder. This is a hint that both Gar Logan and Ralph Dibny were helping the X-Men fight Factor Three. The four evil mutants were defeated and Sean Cassidy was freed from their control.
Sunfire, meanwhile, was a mutant whose pyrokinetic Oddian gene was induced by prenatal exposure to radiation from the Hiroshima bombings. Neither he nor Banshee could fly as they could in the comics, but Shiro Yoshida could control psychically-projected flame. He originally attacked the X-Men on behalf of his uncle Tomo, who wanted vengeance on the United States for the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tomo Yoshida had been a member of the Black Dragons, specifically the same cell who had once dealt with Boris Orloff in his guise of Monsieur Colomb. This sect of Black Dragons had also worked with the superhuman operative Tsunami during the War, whom Dennis Power identifies as another guise of Kyra Zelas. Tomo viewed Sunfire as a successor to Tsunami; fire as a weapon, instead of water. However, Shiro realized the error of his ways and forgave the American X-Men for their country's transgressions against Japan, stopping the plans of his uncle.
The man called Wolverine is hard to explain, as you might imagine. It is unclear how much of his lengthy, complicated, and occasionally self-contradictory backstory is true and how is the product of false or distorted memories or even time paradoxes. He does appear to have been born under the name James Howlett, though he called himself Logan for most of his life. Like many of his peers his Oddian traits were not as noticeable as those of Odd John or other mutants, but he definitely possessed the Oddian pheromones that make them charismatic and sexually desirable. It is unknown how many children Logan has had over the years and how many of them were mutants like him. An entire essay could be written exploring the various accounts the comics give of Wolverine's backstory, so we will, for now, leave that matter for another time. His Oddian abilities included a psychically-induced healing factor and enhanced senses. He also possessed additional bone mass which he could telekinetically reshape into his trademark claws; the adamantium bonded to his bones by Weapon X was used due to its magnetic pliability, which was sensitive to Logan's telekinesis in the same way that most metals were to Magneto's. Just as Magneto seemingly possessed mental blocks which limited his powers to control over electromagnetism, Logan was unable to use his telekinesis in any other way than to shape his claws. In his case this may have been due to the trauma he endured over the course of his long life, both physical and emotional, just as Magneto was similarly traumatized from his imprisonment and torture during the Holocaust.
Vulcan, aka Gabriel Summers, is harder to explain. Both Christopher and Katherine-Anne Summers disappeared in 1939, leaving their children Scott and Alex to experience a plane crash which separated them and left Scott unable to control his optic powers. They were taken from the plane by representatives of the Shiar Empire. Power correctly asserts that the Shiar were from Mongo, and that Mongo was also the basis for Rann and Thanagar. However, as seen in Kinyonga Tales, I have differing thoughts on the nature of the M'Krann Crystal, and I similarly suggest that D'ken had a different identity as well—though D'ken may have been his true name. Japan in 1957 knew his name as Ambassador Phantom, of the planet Krankor.
Krankor was, like Rheton and (in ancient history) Gorath, a Mongovian colony, part of the extensive Shiar Empire which extended from the domain of Emperor Ming. D'ken was reduced to ruling Krankor after he impersonated Ming, who was his father. D'ken was the brother or half-brother of Princess Aura, who had sired the Royal Family of Rheton with an earlier kidnapee from Earth, Terry Blood. Lilandra, D'ken's younger sister, was a vassal from the Hawkmen adopted by Ming as a playmate for Aura and the future Phantom of Krankor.
D'ken was taken with Katherine-Anne Summers and sired not one but two children by her; one, Adam Neramani, would eventually end up on Earth under the name Adam-X after growing up the adopted son of a farmer on Krankor. The other was Gabriel Summers, who would become Vulcan. Gabriel was sent to Earth as a sleeper agent to take revenge on the family and loved ones of the hated Gordon, who had ruined the plans of D'ken's father. However, he was intercepted by Moira MacTaggert, an old friend of Charles Xavier's. When Xavier sensed that Gabriel was related to Scott Summers, he was pleased to have another Summers brother to recruit, as he had determined that Scott's brother Alex's mutant powers, if he had any, were stunted. At the time, Alex Summers' powers were inhibited due to the machinations of “Mr. Sinister,” who had a long-term interest in the Summers family. It does not appear as if Scott was initially aware of his relationship with Gabriel.
The first mission of the new X-Men pitted them against a gang of themed criminals led by the evil nobleman Count Nefaria. While the two X-Men teams working together stopped Nefaria's multi-tiered plan, John Proudstar was killed in action, the first X-Man to die in battle. This was depicted in both X-Men #22-23 and X-Men #94-95. (From here on out, many of the references are to cases that the comics split between the two separate runs of X-Men comics, that of '60s era and that of the '70s; similar battles against Magneto or the Juggernaut between these eras, for example, actually represent one event.)
Following this, the team endured an attack on the X-Mansion from Magneto which solidified Xavier's sureness in the new team. This inspired Caulder to begin looking for recruits for a secondary cell of his own.
Xavier's original team next encountered the Mimic, who was Calvin Rankin, the son of Dr. Ronald Rankin. Rankin was a peer of Dr. Daniel Scott, the scientist responsible for giving Kyra Zelas her adaptive powers—Rankin was interested in continuing Scott's work in a way that would not create a sociopath. To this effect he created a new version of Scott's compound. Dr. Rankin didn't intend for his son Calvin to become his first test subject, but it happened by accident. Calvin triggered a chemical reaction involving the drug that let off mutagenic vapors, and over the course of years he slowly mutated until he could steal skills, powers, and even memories from those around him. Dr. Rankin's version of the Scott formula was much more potent; it is possible that it was enhanced by genetic variations already present in Calvin Rankin. Eventually Calvin's powers were so great that he could steal the abilities of Oddians, even experienced ones like Professor X. He battled the X-Men as the Mimic, but eventually he joined the team instead. Yet because his powers weren't owed to a natural mutation they were unstable—plus, he was generally disliked by the team roster for his brash attitude. Eventually it came time for him to leave the team when his powers failed completely, but he did so having learned much about life. (Professor X may have used his own powers to burn out Calvin's prematurely.)
The second batch of X-Men had their first encounter with the Sentinels, and shortly thereafter both teams faced a vengeful Juggernaut. The original team met Spider-Man, who had just become active around that time. But bigger things were coming. Jean Grey was swiftly gaining power, and Professor X could sense that in time she would attract powerful presences to herself. He was correct, and a sequence of events transpired quickly which led to this attraction. The Shiar came to Earth in search of Gabriel Summers. At this point, with her brother on Krankor, Lilandra was the de facto ruler of Mongo. The X-Men became allies with Lilandra when they fought the returning D'ken, and Lilandra was smitten with Charles Xavier. In time Xavier would become Lilandra's royal consort. In returning from Mongo the team's spacecraft was damaged and began to crash down on Earth. To save her comrades Jean expended all her power to stop the crash, which seemingly killed her. The effort in truth opened her up to the Phoenix Force, an ancient astral power, and she was reborn as the Phoenix. Phoenix would continue to grow in power and in doing so attract the attentions of the Mastermind. Mastermind was bitter over the defeat of both the Brotherhood of Mutants and Factor Three, so he began to use his powers to manipulate Jean Grey into becoming the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. (As Power has pointed out, this is the same as the historical Hellfire Club, plus the organization which John Steed and Emma Peel of The Avengers faced in “A Touch of Brimstone.”) The corruption of Jean created the Dark Phoenix, which destroyed a star and wiped out an entire civilization. Lilandra's Shiar tried to hunt down and destroy the Dark Phoenix, but in the end Jean chose to commit suicide rather than allow Dark Phoenix to cause more destruction.
The X-Men, especially Scott and Xavier, were heartbroken, but soldiered onward. They battled one of the many monsters created by the Frankenstein family, as well as a returning Magneto. The team's relationship with the Shiar opened Earth up to invasion by the Z'nox, and during this time Niles Caulder went missing to prepare to fight the Z'nox off. Upon his departure the team was Arani Desai, the woman known as Celsius. While traveling in India during his Damien Harmon days, Caulder had married Desai to save her from an abusive arranged marriage-to-be, and he trusted her with his enterprises. Desai was an Oddian with powers mirroring those of both Iceman and Sunfire—her presence as part of the organization convinced Sunfire to leave, returning home to his younger sister Leyu. In addition to her mutant powers Desai was also a formidable martial arts trainee, having received training in the academies of the Nine Unknown. Her parentage is unknown but her private journals indicated she was a daughter of Mowgli, the famous jungle boy.
Desai introduced the Doom Patrol to their new recruits, Tempest and Negative Woman. From here on out Cliff Steele would aid a new faction made of herself plus these two others.
Tempest was Joshua Clay, an African-American child adopted by Norman Reed and his wife Paula Clayton. Reed and his wife had their lives depicted in the film Weird Woman (1944); Paula had had an illegitimate son by Russian scientist Joseph Javorski named Daniel who was raised as if he were Norman's son. Daniel Clay met his demise in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), and his mother committed suicide in response to both this and the death of Dr. Javorski, which occurred in The Beast of Yucca Flats (1956). The tragedy of his mother's death awoke Joshua's mutation, which is depicted in the comics as hot energy blasts that he can shoot from his hands. In truth his powers were a strange sort of sonic vibration that appeared white in color, perhaps similar to Sean Cassidy's psychic blasts. He enjoyed a brief career as a solo hero which led to his being called out to join Gar Logan's team-that-never-was in 1958.
The story behind Valentina Vostok is a bit more complicated. The story begins with her father, who came from Mars.
Specifically, he came from a specific version of Mars—a version of Malacandra which was invaded by the sarmaks. The sarmaks were the “Martians” who invaded Earth in the War of the Worlds in 1898. The sarmaks subjected the native civilizations, the Sorns, the Hrossa, and the Pfifltriggi, to slavery and what Alan Moore calls in the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen “flesh-mechanics.” They created Sorns that had wings, probably for the intent of using them as bioweapons. Some of them they exposed to chemical agents which they had captured in their long years of marauding the stars, which mutated them. The sarmaks discovered how to create Sorns that could alter their physical forms; these sarmaks used the same sort of compound on themselves to give themselves new humanoid bodies. These humanoid sarmaks were similar to the human-Martian creatures that appear in H.G. Wells' Star Begotten (1937). They called themselves the Z'nox, or White Martians.
One of the winged Sorns escaped Malacandra and ended up on Earth in the main universe. Here, he was subjected to vivisection at the hands of the wicked Professor Alterstein, before he was able to escape. This was depicted in Ritson and Stanley Stewart's The Professor's Last Experiment (1888). For a time, this Sorn remained in hiding, slowly healing from his traumatizing experiments.
It seems this Sorn's original name was Aarkus, or at least that is the closest to our pronunciation of it. In the decades of his regeneration he slowly made the decision to channel his remorse from his torture into a thirst for justice. He vowed to become a lawman amongst the people of the planet he was stranded on.
Using his shape-shifting powers he was able to hide his wings, and he began a crimefighting career in the mid 1930s. Under his true name of Aarkus he established an identity as the Vision. Under this guise he became friends with a New York policeman named Jim Corrigan—in 1938, however, Corrigan was murdered. Aarkus used his powers to impersonate Corrigan and used Corrigan's face to start up another vigilante identity. It was this version of him that was recorded in comics as the Spectre. As always, the comics had a propensity to exaggerate. In 1945, Aarkus met Batman and Robin under the alias of Roh Kar, and they aided him in tracking down a sarmak who survived the failed 1938 Martian invasion. It is probable that Aarkus was also the hero called Marsman who was recorded briefly in British comics in 1948.
In 1947, Aarkus abandoned his Jim Corrigan identity to instead honor another policeman who died under his watch: in this case the slain cop was a rookie by the name of John Jones. In Jones' guise he took on his most famous identity, the Manhunter from Mars. Aarkus, like Bolivar Trask, had been an affiliate of Paul Kirk and Dan Richards, and it was from their title of Manhunter that he took this latest name. (If Trask and Aarkus knew each other, Trask may have created a robot based on Aarkus' shape-changing powers which was known to the comics as Amazo or the Super-Adaptoid.) Aarkus was active as the Martian Manhunter from 1947 up until his unfortunate murder by the Scorpio Killer in 1965. At some point in this career, perhaps as early as 1955, the Martian Manhunter worked in tandem with Niles Caulder and the Doom Patrol. It was their mutual plan that the Manhunter take on the form of an alien called “Garguax” to infiltrate the Brain's Brotherhood. In the comics, John Jones' infiltration of the Brotherhood was symbolized by the Martian Manhunter discarding his Jones identity in the face of an attack by a terrorist group called VULTURE, and subsequently deciding to take on the identity of “Marco Xavier” in order to wage war against VULTURE. The Xavier name was tip-off that “Jones” was working in close concert with Niles Caulder and his ally Charles Xavier.
Aarkus was the father of “Valentina Vostok” by an unknown woman. It is possible he reproduced asexually as well. Her true name is unknown but he raised her under the name Megan Morse. The sarmak alterations made to him were genetic, and so she also had his shape-changing powers. She carried out several missions under her father's watch both in the United States and the Soviet Union. It was in Russia that she picked up her Valentina Vostok identity. Aarkus was disinterested in joining the Doom Patrol himself, but Valentina jumped at the chance to become Negative Woman.
The new Doom Patrol was faced with problems from the start. In addition to fighting the Brotherhood, General Immortus, and others, they also blew their cover early on, exposing them to investigation by the Department of Defense. The agent sent to investigate Celsius' cadre was Matthew Cable. Cable had previously studied strange cases when he'd embarked on a long quest to determine the safety of Baron Emmelmann's emigration to the United States. Baron Emmelmann was the plant-based creature better known as the Heap. Cable had befriended the Heap and verified that his presence in Louisiana was not a threat. It would be a long time before he determined for himself that the Doom Patrol were also not a threat.
Returning to the X-Men: after their latest battle with Magneto, the Angel ended up encountering a sunken facility which was the seeming hideout of aviator hero Barry Rand. Rand had once had adventures under the alias of the Red Falcon. Angel was initially confused, as he'd heard that Barry Rand had retired to a place call K'un-Lun; he became more confused when Rand tried to kill him. In disabling him, he learned that this version of Rand was not the true Red Falcon, but an android double of him. Exploring the facility further, Angel learned that this place was stocked with robotic duplicates of many heroes of pre-World War II era, including Doc Savage, The Shadow, Ka-Zar, and the Angel Detective (“Gabriel Wilde”/“Steve Oakes”/“Tom Halloway”), whom Warren had derived his name from. Unable to determine if this site was a relic of a supervillain scheme that never materialized, or if it was some sort of macabre museum put together by a well-meaning hero who had been a peer of these others, the Angel chose to destroy the base in the end rather than allow it to fall into the wrong hands.
In early 1964 the X-Men battled Magneto's newest ally, Mesmero. Mesmero may be a descendant or pupil of any number of the world's famous hypnotists—what matters more is his victim. Lorna Dane was an obscure relative of Henry Pym. Ostensibly his half-sister by Henry's father Darryl Dane, Lorna's parentage was actually in doubt. Magneto claimed her as his daughter, and that manifested in her magnetic powers. At the end of their battle against Magneto and Mesmero, the X-Men convinced Lorna to join them as Polaris.
The X-Men next discovered that Scott and Gabriel Summers' brother Alex was also a mutant. When his powers manifested they learned of his connection to the Living Monolith, a powerful mutant who was born Achmed Abdol. Abdol was an archaeologist but he had poor memory of his childhood. When Charles Xavier joined the X-Men against the Living Monolith he was shocked. Achmed Abdol seemed to be a perfect double of his “uncle,” Alexis Xavier. What was more, the power he and Alex Summers shared was the same power of the Stone God—the same power that John Wainwright had used to create Xavier. Finally all the pieces were in place, and Xavier recognized the chronal echoes which created the Ghost Family.
Achmed Abdol was a clone of Alexis Xavier. He was created by Sinister, the brilliant geneticist. Sinister had had his eye on the Summers family for some time, and was deeply fascinated by the link between the power of Alex Summers and the power of Charles Xavier, more than the link that seemed to exist between Xavier and all other mutants. Abdol had had some of Alex's genes infused into him, which is why they had their connection. Sinister wanted to know the secrets of the Stone God, and wondered if someday he could either obtain or destroy that power.
Xavier began to sense that in the near future the X-Men would begin to unravel their own existence, leaving marks behind on the timeline. He had no idea of how soon this would transpire, however. After the death of Jean Grey, Scott had begun dating a woman named Madelyne Pryor. Neither Scott nor Madelyne knew that Madelyne was a clone of Jean creating by Sinister—he was keen on breeding the two mutants, to create the perfect mutant child. In 1964 they married, and Madelyne gave birth to their first child, a son named Nathan. Nathan Summers was doomed to be infected with a virus by Sinister's master Apocalypse, who was En Sabah Nur, the son of Rama-Tut. The techno-organic virus was a piece of Borg technology originally brought to Apocalypse from the future when an older incarnation of Nathan Summers had traveled back in time to kill En Sabah Nur before he obtained his powers. However, the techno-organic virus which this version of Nathan infected the young Apocalypse with activated Apocalypse's mutant powers—thus, he infected Nathan to infect himself and become Apocalypse. Scott and Madelyne learned that their son was destined to become a cyborg monstrosity and there was no cure.
It was here that the couple were visited by two individuals, both calling themselves Raven, a man and a woman. From the Doom Patrol's files Scott recognized the male Raven as Matt Cable, who by now had become an ally of the Doom Patrol. Madelyne remarked the woman looked like she could be she and Scott's daughter. The female Raven remarked she was, in a way. Her name was Rachel Summers, and she was Scott's daughter with Jean Grey. At some point in her timeline she had taken to living in the 41st Century, in the war-ravaged time that Kang came from. One of the warlords that ruled this era was Apocalypse. However, in the 41st Century was a refuge where Nathan's virus could be treated. He would be raised among this order, the Clan Askani (the 41st Century incarnation of the Order of the Madonna, seen in my book The Divine Mrs. E), and made into a strong warrior to defeat Apocalypse once and for all. Scott and Madelyne realized it was his only chance, and gave him up to the pair.
Time is relative, and so when Cyclops first met the man named Cable—who took his title from the man who raised him—only months had passed since young Nathan Summers had been taken to the future. But for Nathan, decades had gone by, and he had become the warrior of the Askani legends.
The revelation that some version of the future contained a daughter parented by Scott Summers and Jean Grey negatively affected Madelyne Pryor. Then, suddenly, Jean was alive again, revived by the Phoenix Force. Scott ran right into her arms, leaving Madelyne. Around this time, the X-Men visited the future timeline which Rachel Summers had come from in the course of their next battle against the Sentinels. This was the same timeline described previously which contained the future worlds of The Terminator and The Matrix; Rachel Summers was one of John Connors' freedom fighters. Joining them on this mission to the future were Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, as well as Cable. Wanda, whose powers influenced probability, was badly affected by this journey, and by the proximity of Cable. To her both their surroundings and the older Nathan Summers were just possibilities, things that could be but which weren't guaranteed. Though she was able to provide support on the mission she was physically and emotionally unbalanced for weeks afterward. She proved instrumental in defending the X-Mansion when Professor X brought a Xenomorph egg in for study from the polar ice caps, and the egg developed into an adult Xenomorph. She held the creature off long enough for the second X-Men cadre to arrive and destroy the monster. The X-Men had been fighting Batman's enemy the Joker, who had trapped several of their members in a massive theme park, or “Murderworld,” which was (as the name suggests) designed to kill them. The Joker had been paid to do so by the enemies of the X-Men and was in the mood to accept money in exchange for his services—in any case he hated any costumed hero, as they had a propensity for aiding Batman sooner or later.
Madelyne Pryor was driven mad by all that had transpired in her marriage. The stress activated her mutant powers, and she restyled herself the Goblin Queen, perhaps taking inspiration from Spider-Man's foe the Green Goblin. She sought out her creator, Sinister, and they joined forces. With her psionics she began to open portals to other dimensions which allowed in a variety of extraterrestrial monsters. All X-Men and Doom Patrol teams were needed to defend their bases from these portals, and in the end Jean was forced to kill Madelyne. Sinister tried to erase Jean's memories with his powers, hoping to make her submit to him, but the combined forces of Scott and Gabriel Summers seemingly killed Sinister. They had yet to learn who exactly he was, aside from a servant of the mysterious Apocalypse.
In truth, Apocalypse had used Sinister to first ensure his own existence by creating Cable and the Borg virus, and later to ensure his conquest of Earth by creating the Living Monolith. Jean and Scott began to research who Sinister was, when they began to turn up evidence that he had been around for over a century. He had once been Nathaniel Mirakle, the pre-Darwin evolutionary theorist whose life was depicted in the film Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). After his seemingly death in 1846, Mirakle had been approached by En Sabah Nur to manipulate the Summers and Grey families into being so as to create Cable. Mirakle agreed, craving the power Apocalypse offered to him. Apocalypse supplied Mirakle with knowledge of the two derived from his encounter with a time-traveling Cable, which had occurred during Cable's training to defeat him. After mutating Mirakle into a stronger form, Apocalypse called Mirakle his “strong left hand,” and Mirakle renamed himself “Sinister,” which originally meant “left.”
Around the time that Jean and Scott were researching Mirakle, two of their children appeared on Earth. Rachel Summers, younger than she'd been when Cyclops first met her, arrived in the company of a man who was very similar to Cable. He explained he was Nate Grey, their son, and he was from a future which was yet to be created. Both were interested in joining the X-Men, with Rachel demonstrated that she, too, was a holder of the Phoenix Force. Unsure of how to handle the situation, Jean and Scott refused to allow them to join for now.
Rachel, however, had come to this era for another reason. In her future she knew that she had set up this life in the past, and brought Nate with her—but furthermore, it was in the past that she met the love of her life. It did not go unnoticed among the X-Men and Doom Patrol that Rachel Summers and Gar Logan were spending a lot of time together.
Once Alex Summers joined the team as Havok, they took on Karl Lykos, a mutant with the psychic power to swap bodies. He worked for the Brain's Brotherhood, and around the time he joined up, Mallah was at long last able to clone an extinct species, which was intended originally for the Brain to take as a body. It was decided that Lykos would “test-drive” the body of the pterosaur, but Lykos refused to give it up, becoming the monstrous Sauron. The X-Men defeated Sauron after a prolonged battle. Shortly thereafter they faced the Hulk, who was back on the rampage.
After the battle with the Hulk the Z'nox invasion occurred. Dennis Power says that DC portrayed this incident as Panic in the Sky and Invasion!, suggesting that the Z'nox allied themselves with Brainiac, who at this point had temporarily mutated to an advanced, skeleton-like form after coming in contact with Apocalypse's Borg virus. That the Z'nox were also the White Martians means this likely inspired the story of Justice League of America #144, which featured the core Justice League members and some of DC's 1950s characters driving off a White Martian invasion. While the comics correctly featured the appearances of Robotman, Plastic Man (actually Negative Man), Congorilla (their stand-in for Beast), the Challengers of the Unknown, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen during these events, they also added extraneous characters such as Rip Hunter, Rex the Wonder Dog, the Blackhawks, Roy Raymond, and the Vigilante. The coalition of heroes were successful in driving back the invaders.
Following this, the Brain's Brotherhood fell into ruins. Madame Rouge, loyal primarily to Magneto, used a bomb to kill the Brain and Mallah. Next, she discovered an undersea monster, a mutant collection of plants that had some degree of sentience. The origin of the so-called “Krakoa” remain a mystery. However, it seems as if there are certain connections between exotic, sentient flora and the Great Old Ones—in the 1970s, UNIT reports an encounter with a plant-creature called a “Krynoid” in Antarctica, near the citadel recorded in Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Similarly, it was at the polar extremities that Doc Savage's 1925 encounter with the shape-shifting “Thing from Another World” took place, and where the U.S. Army had a run-in with a sentient plant creature of a similar nature in 1949. It would seem there was a connection between these two “Things.” The Elder Things experimented with shaping both animal and vegetable matter to make their shape-changing shoggoths, creating both the Thing from “Who Goes There?” and the Thing from The Thing from Another World. These vegetable shoggoths, over time, transformed into the Krynoids as well. Dennis Power suggests, however, that the Thing was a Founder, as seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—it may have been then that the Elder Things took preexisting species, such as the Founders and Krynoids, and altered them for their purposes. In any case, it is probable that Krakoa was an Elder Thing experiment or weapon, left abandoned on the ocean floor. Rouge brought Krakoa to the small town of Codsville, Maine, population 14, and challenged both the X-Men and the Doom Patrol to save the town from the monster.
All four teams arrived and battled the vastly powerful Krakoa. They did so far out at sea, witnessed only by the people of Codsville through binoculars. Though they saved the town, it was not without cost. Niles Caulder, Arani Desai, Rita Farr, and Gabriel Summers were all killed, and Ralph Dibny, Cliff Steele, Joshua Clay, and all of the original X-Men were badly injured. While Clay would recover and continue to adventure with Megan Morse, the Maximoffs, and the rebuilt Robotman, the Doom Patrol was effectively over, with Dibny leaving in grief over the death of his sister, and Gar Logan now finally determined to form his own team. Clay's injuries necessitated replacing parts of his body with mechanical prosthetics, supplied with the aid of Xavier's finances and Cable's technical skill. Robotman's injuries were much more dire.
While transporting Cliff Steele's body for repairs, the truck which held it was stolen by Ultron. Ultron was a space probe computer built by Hank Pym in what would become a prototype for Jackson Roykirk's Nomad probe. While it had limited movement it could manipulate other machines into doing its bidding. Like the Nomad probe, Ultron went rogue and believed that it could “perfect” mankind—its primary goal was to resurrect the Colossus AI and reactivate its World War III plans. To this end it sought to make Robotman into its drone. It had also stolen the body of the Martian Manhunter, killed several months prior. Ultron was able to imprint the Manhunter's unique Sorn physiology onto Robotman, which in the process erased Cliff Steele's personality—the Manhunter's shapeshifting was passed on only imperfectly, allowing the android to change his mass and weight, and to walk through walls, as “J'onn J'onzz” once did, but no more. With the Cliff Steele persona erased, Ultron next downloaded a backup of Colossus into the Robotman body. The X-Men, with the aid of the Giant Men, were able to track down Ultron and destroy him, and accepted Robotman back, unaware that he was now infected with Colossus.
Eventually, in early 1968, “the Vision” revealed his corruption as he attempted to take over the world's computers. He killed Hank Pym (symbolized in the comics by the killing of Scott Lang) and tried to kill Green Arrow, who was drawn into the fray. In the end, Piotr Rasputin gave his life to shut Robotman down and purge him of the Colossus AI, made possible by their connection, as Colossus' activation had triggered Piotr's mutant powers. The comics would record this as Colossus giving his life to stop a virus—not a computer virus, but the Legacy Virus.
Robotman was rebuilt, but he lacked the persona he once had, which ended his relationship with the Scarlet Witch. With this, and the deaths of Colossus and Vulcan, the X-Men and the Doom Patrol both decided to disband. However, this was not the end of the adventures of their various members. Hank McCoy, for example, would settle down and have a family, and in both realities he was an ancestor of Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (who in turn is a descendant of Monk Mayfair, and thus a member of the Wold Newton Family). Megan Morse took on her father's mantle as the Martian Manhunter, though the media at the time insisted on calling her “Ms. Martian.” Charles Xavier spent time among the Mongovian Empire as Lilandra's consort.
Around this time, Gar Logan had finished college, and he decided to finally put together his squad. He contacted Rachel Summers, Joshua Clay, and Leyu Yoshida, younger sister of Sunfire, and together they faced down such menaces as Slade Wilson (variously called “Deathstroke,” “Deadpool,” and “the Terminator”), the Antlered God, and the Church of Blood, established by the evil priest Brother Sivas Blood, who made public his Mongovian ancestry. Rachel Summers' name of Raven reflected her mother's Phoenix. Joshua Clay, whose techno-organic replacements allowed him to focus his sonic blasts like never before, never called himself Cyborg, retaining his Tempest name instead. Leyu called herself Sunpyre, but she was one of the inspirations for the character of Starfire. Rachel Summers and Gar Logan at last ended up in a romantic relationship.
Logan's “Titans” were unprepared, however, for the coming Age of Apocalypse. Apocalypse captured Cable, Cyclops, Iceman, Magneto, Phoenix, Polaris, Professor X, Storm, and Sunpyre, along with the Living Monolith, forming his “Ten” (expanded in the comics to “the Twelve”). These mutants were all necessary to power a battery which would transfer power through the Living Monolith into Apocalypse himself. This was the purpose of the Living Monolith's creation, and consequently Sinister's—Sinister had ensured the existence of the Summers-Grey families with his genetic manipulation and thus he created three of the Ten. The ritual was a success—at least, in one form of reality it was. The Living Monolith met his final death, and the eight other mutants were drawn into the ensuing “Age of Apocalypse.”
In this reality, Apocalypse had control over a newly manufactured M'Krann Crystal, born in the heart of the dimensional distortion. It took the work of all the mutants working together, along with a new mutant native to this reality, Nate Grey, to even slightly disturb Apocalypse's reign. Charles Xavier's son David led the X-Men into the dimensional disturbance, including Wanda Maximoff, despite her brother's concerns about the probability-shock after losing Cliff so recently. While Apocalypse was ultimately defeated, Wanda was unhinged, and more dangerously, she was exposed to the energies of Apocalypse's M'Krann Crystal, which was a nexus of possibilities.
Maximoff blamed mutantdom for all that had happened to her. Her mutation had seen her shunned early in life, and the war between mutants had enslaved she and her brother to Magneto. Though it wasn't a mutant who was directly responsible for what happened to Cliff Steele, she blamed the whole of the conflict which led to his condition on Apocalypse, who had engineered some of the key players of the X-Men-Brotherhood conflict. With her words, “No more mutants,” she reached back in time to find the source of all the Oddians who had sprung up over the years. She was able to discover damage to local time which was linked to the same power Apocalypse used to create his Age. This damage was caused by some of the Living Monolith's power, or what it had been in its original form, being used to create a being whose appearance triggered mutant genes which may not have otherwise become active. Her proclamation erased this being from existence by burning out the power of the Stone God before the entity could use it. In doing so, she erased her own past.
The X-Men were preserved by being in another universe at the time of the change—this universe was replaced with another, which would become their home. It is probable that they and the world they were trapped in was the Marvel Universe. Meanwhile, back in the Crossover Universe proper, time attempted to repair itself for the damages left behind by the X-Men's absence. As a result it created a chronal echo which manifested in the form of Katja Orloff and her family. Their existence formed a seal of clean paradox which ensured that the timeline marched on without the X-Men's involvement. The full implications of this remain to be seen, but the cases of the X-Men were exaggerated in their comic book adaptations—or they happened far from Earth. That is to say that while they sometimes involved events of a cosmic scale, they were self-contained enough where their erasure from time did not significantly damage the passing of historical events as we know them.
However, as I have said, there were scars. Katja Orloff didn't exist in time before Wanda Maximoff removed the mutants from existence, and her family always sensed there was something strange about her—which is exceptional, given who her father and brothers were. Recalling Maximoff herself, there were rumors among strangers that Katja was a witch—perhaps Katja was a reincarnation of the Scarlet Witch as well as the other woman she echoed. Katja herself unconsciously sensed that she was a dimensional anomaly, an external addition to the universe, but she found a sense of belonging with her husband Terry. In truth Terry was a reborn Christopher Summers, and Katja his wife Katherine-Anne. Curiously, in the comics, Christopher Summers is the space pirate Corsair, while Terry Blood was a descendant of the pirate Peter Blood.
Through Katja and Terry, Scott, Alex, Adam, Gabriel, Nathan, Rachel, and Nate Summers were all reborn, under new names. They and their children were the Ghost Family of Rheton, and this Family ruled the planet with an iron fist until they were deposed by Bloody Mary and a traitor from their own bloodline, the deathless adventurer Immorté.
However, the damage dealt to the timeline of Terra-X by the creation of the worlds of Days of Future Past and the Age of Apocalypse, along with the Scarlet Witch's retcon, furthered the dimensional devastation perpetuated by the Dubh Ardrain Incident and the use of the so-called “Alt-Book” by Bacchus Jones, a white supremacist and friend of President Woodrew Tromble. Together with an artifact known as the Stanton Cane (once a possession of the werewolf Larry Talbot), Jones attempted to significantly alter history. Though he was defeated by Qiang Jiantou, a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Fu Manchu, and his alterations were undone, the severe trauma he subjected the timeline to thinned the membranes of Universe-X. Jones' war against humanity was depicted in Katherine Avalon's novel Fuck Off S.R. (2018). These cascading assaults on the dimensional stability of Universe-X eventually led to the victory of Bloody Mary's enemy Tsuu-Aas.
This timeline provides a version of events that writers can refer to if they view the X-Men as fitting into the Crossover Universe, while also satisfying those who consider the accounts of their exploits as incompatible with what we have seen so far.
